I laughed, I
cried, I think I even held a razor to my wrist at one point. That would
best describe the excruciating, harrowing, and incredibly tedious
experience that was “Monster,” The Asylum’s cheap ass wannabe of “Cloverfield.”
And coming down from my high, “Monster” was like a vicious detox filled
with vomiting, retching, and cold sweats, and I’ll tell you, it was a
brutal carbon copy. Watching it after “Cloverfield,” this piece of crap
just didn’t compare; hell it didn’t even compare to the teaser trailer
of “Cloverfield.” If “Cloverfield” never existed, this still would be an
incredibly awful movie. Want to know the plot to “Monster”? Well, there
are two whole shots of rubber tentacles that pass as a monster, there’s
a lot of darkness, and of course there are two bitches whining in front
of a camera with nothing happening the entire time except the distinct
plummeting of brain cells into the black hole that is Asylum Studios.
There, I saved you ninety minutes, now run! The Asylum sometimes names
their films after an up and coming film and the similarities end there,
but “Monster” is such an offensively stupid rip off of JJ Abrams film
that is frighteningly close to how “Cloverfield” begins.

Except now
director Eric Forsberg sets his sights down on two shrill
shrews who are filming a documentary about global warming,
and document every single moment of their trip, from the
conversation about eyes in their house to their partying in
Tokyo. How this factors into the actual documentary, who the
hell knows? But every inch of atmosphere, tension, and
foreboding dread is nowhere to be found and is pretty much
left with better films. Where as “Cloverfield” attempted to
bring us in to an experience,

“Monster” constantly
reminds us that it’s a movie and that we’re basically sitting through a
low budget horror film, and I could never really decipher what Forsberg
wanted from this movie, in the end. Asylum rips scenes from the first
trailer and inserts it into the first half hour of the film, inserts the
Asian references from the internet viral marketing and basically just
throws in whatever shit they feel would warrant tension, and this
amounts to nothing more than a limp wristed wannabe that’s so insanely
vain in its attempts to amount to what “Cloverfield” offers. So what
Asylum does, since it lacks the budget of any kind to shoot an epic
monster movie, opts for just ninety minutes of two women in a basement
babbling, whining, and moaning as sounds play in the distance of monster
roars and explosions.

Most importantly,
they never even show this monster that’s attacking Tokyo; for all we
know it’s a massive Earthquake of some sort. What are these tentacles
from? Where are they coming from? Are they apart of a monster? Or
perhaps a giant squid? Who knows? They sure as hell don't. And you have
to laugh when one of the women look down at a sound floor and scream,
“There’s something underneath the ground!” It’s a scene on par with
community theater; worse is that the two actresses are so incredibly
unconvincing as journalists regardless of how many Clinton hand gestures
they force on us. From practicing interviews to interviewing a Tokyo
official, they look like Spring breakers playing journalists for fun,
and they often seemed very bored with the dialogue. But then, who can
blame them? It’s an empty exercise discussing this movie any further.
It’s awful, it’s just… it’s awful.

Watching
“Cloverfield” was like a rollercoaster ride on uppers. “Monster” was a
stomp in the nuts with wooden clogs. The only thing that kept me from
curling up in the fetal position and crying was knowing that the film
I’d seen prior to this would be available for my purchase in months
time. Damn you, Asylum. Damn you all to hell. Too much?

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